“What sort of threshkreen ships can do so much damage to the People?” Guano asked. “These humans didn’t even fly among the stars until recently.”
“I’ve wondered about that,” Ziramoth admitted. “I don’t have a complete theory, but I think it is precisely that they never got off this one planet that made them so good at the Path of Fury. They had to learn to fight, even above their weight, or their own clans — they call them ‘nations’ or ‘countries’ or, sometimes, ‘states’ — would have been exterminated by others. Demons know, though, that whatever it was they have gotten to be fierce. Even here, where there was little aggression from other clans, they practiced by fighting internally almost all the time. I think maybe, too, that it is something inside them, something maybe even more intense than drives the People, that makes them fight so.”
Guanamarioch shivered, remembering a seared palm and a threshkreen heavy weapons crew that had died in place rather than retreat an inch.
The God King shrugged then, not wanting to remember in too much detail the initial fighting in which he had taken part shortly after first landing. He changed the subject.
“What other news, Zira?”
“Our clan is being pressed, too, Guano, though not by the threshkreen. South of here the People have not been able to take the mountain city the threshkreen call ‘Bogotá.’ Not enough food that high to sustain us. And the passes are narrow and easily defended by the threshkreen. Other clans have had no more luck, either. They are beginning to try to expand into the area we have claimed. We may get no more than one harvest, or at most two, before we must move into the Darien to escape destruction at the Peoples’ hands.”
“So soon?” the God King asked, a note of despair creeping into his voice among the clicks and snarls.
“It is as it has always been, my friend, ever since the Aldenata made us as we are and cast us loose.”
Chapter 23
“And plenty of times they’ve been tempted to turn their backs on the enemy — the so-called enemy, that is — and give it to the real one, once and for all… No, my friend, in war the real enemy is seldom who you think.”
La Joya Prison, Republic of Panama
Forget Alcatraz. Get The Shawshank Redemption out of your mind. Think Dachau.
The prison was a rectangle or, rather, two concentric rectangles of six meter high chain link topped by another meter of razor wire. Guards armed with automatic weapons stood atop towers regularly spaced along the exterior fence. Other, equestrian, guards patrolled the space between the fences.
To the north an open garbage fire burned. Fortunately, the prevailing breeze drove the resultant foul smoke and smoldering bits of trash away from both prisoners and guards. Despite the merciful breeze, though, the place still stank as one might expect a prison to stink that was intended to hold just over one thousand prisoners and forced to hold almost three times as many.
Over and above the nearly three thousand criminals, La Joya now contained a new group, international criminals awaiting extradition to the Hague. There were thirty-three of them, so far, thirty-one Panamanians and two Americans. Every few hours a new batch would be added, by threes and fours.
One barrackslike building near the prison’s main gate had been cleared for the newcomers, adding to the overcrowding. Around this one building a gateless concertina fence had been erected, two of Cortez’s guards standing watch.
Four other guards passed through the gate, two of them bearing arms and two others carrying a small redheaded woman, slumped unconscious. The armed guards, bayonets fixed, entered first, the threat of the bayonets forcing back the other prisoners. The other pair entered after, once a sufficient space had been cleared, and dumped their slight burden unceremoniously on the floor. The four left immediately after that.
Boyd and a dozen of the others crowded around before four of them spontaneously lifted Digna off the floor and carried her to a bed, the lowest layer of a thin-mattressed triple bunk. The mattress, as all such in the prison, stank and carried lice. There was nothing to be done about that; the lice were everywhere and would find even those fastidious souls who chose not to sleep with them.
Beyond the first blows of the initial pounding as Cortez had tried to get the woman to release her dental death grip on his calf, Boyd had not seen the rest. He could surmise though, that the general, not satisfied with pounding the woman’s head until her teeth were pried loose from his calf, had had a couple of his goons work her over, first in the helicopter and then, again, here in the prison.
No, Boyd hadn’t witnessed either beating, being unconscious himself for the first while the second had taken place outside the building. Even so, loosened and missing teeth, eyes swollen shut, blood, bruises, welts and cuts spoke eloquently. Indeed, some of the blood was too eloquent. It oozed from between Digna’s legs, telltale of a gang rape with Digna as the guest of dishonor.
“Bastards,” Boyd muttered, heart full of hate and impotent rage.
“What the hell is this all about?” demanded one of the other prisoners. “It’s a nightmare. I didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, I imagine you did,” answered Boyd. “Did you defend your country?”
“That’s not the crime,” piped in one of the barrack’s two gringos. “Even the United Nations hasn’t quite succeeded in making self-defense a crime.”
Boyd looked over at the gringo who spoke.
“Jeff McNair,” the gringo responded, putting out his hand. “Captain of the USS Des Moines. Maybe I should say, the ex-captain. This reprobate beside me is Sid Goldblum, captain or perhaps ex-captain of the Salem.”
“Pleased to meet you both, Captains,” Boyd answered in New England-accented English, shaking first McNair’s hand and then Goldblum’s. “What are you charged with?”
McNair answered for both sailors. “In our case we fell afoul of Additional Protocol One to Geneva Convention IV. That one bars engaging guerillas except when they are actively trying to attack. Personally, I think it’s a considerable stretch to call the Posleen guerillas. Not that the rule made sense even against human guerillas.”
“Ah,” Boyd said. “I see. Me, I was making landmines.”
“For shame,” McNair said. “Bad, wicked, naughty man. You should be ashamed, you know. Landmines are a special no-no to the UN and EU.”
McNair chuckled without humor. “Pretty funny, really. A neurotic English princess gets locked into a loveless marriage that has both parties cheating nearly from the outset. Though she was, at best, somewhat pretty, she managed to convince the world she was beautiful. Then she dies and to commemorate her death people create a treaty that is only apparently beautiful and which was guaranteed to have anyone under threat cheating from the outset. Lovely bit of eulogizing cum international statesmanship.”
“What did that poor woman do?” Goldblum asked. “And what did they do to her?”
“She led ten thousand or more of her people out of Chiriqui,” Boyd answered. “In the process, she used some under-aged boys and girls to fight who would have been eaten if she had lost. As to what they did to her… Bastards!”